Weird Poverty

As some of you know, I haven’t had any luck finding a permanent job. For the past two years, I’ve been doing a lot of temping, freelancing and odd jobs, with a little job searching thrown in for good measure.

After a week without work, a shut-off notice from Seattle City Light and a who-knows-when arrival date on a paycheck, I decided it was time for a trip to the food bank.

The closest one I found was the University District Food Bank. If you live in Seattle, you might have seen it. It’s located at the intersection of 50th and University Way, up the hill from the Grand Illusion Theatre.

I asked one of my neighbors, who is in similar circumstances, to come along. We arrived around 4 PM, and there was a line of about 20 outside the tiny entrance located on the side of the University Christian Church.

Every few minutes, a guy would open the door and let in two more people. We stood outside for probably a half hour before he let us in. In the meantime, I chatted with a couple of women in front of us. One was single, working part-time, the other had three children. They had both been at the food bank before and said there a decent selection of food there.

The whole thing reminded me of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, which I am reading right now. Published in 1933, it is Orwell’s firsthand account of living in poverty on both sides of the Channel. In the London half, Orwell lives as a tramp, roaming among lodging houses and casual wards, which are part homeless shelter, part prison. In his first night at a casual ward, or “spike,” Orwell and his fellow inmates are stripped naked together, forced to share the same dirty bathwater and sleep in cells without beds. The pleasures Orwell experiences include meals of bread and butter, an overly friendly cell-mate, potato peeling duty and a smallpox inspection involving more public stripping and standing around with other naked men.

When I say the food bank reminded me of Orwell’s novel, I mean it in spirit only. I have never gone to a food bank or received any kind of social assistance, so to me this felt like I was taking a step into a whole new world. Honestly, I think reading this novel sort of programmed me to come up with the idea. But when I finally went inside, what I saw was nothing like the dreary, hostile charities of Orwell’s youth.

It was like kids playing store in the family basement. Beneath the low ceiling, shelves were set up to create tiny aisles. There were two almost-empty coolers in the back. They also had those truncated gray shopping carts I’ve seen at QFC. It like Alice in Wonderland, where everything is really tiny before she drinks the potion. Or that half-floor in Being John Malkovich.

I didn’t bring my camera. Blogging wasn’t on my mind at the time. But you can get a sense of what the place looks like here and some other info here.

Up front, a friendly middle-aged woman asked me for ID and a piece of mail for proof that I live in their service area. She handed me a laminated card, color-coded with the number and type of items I would be allowed to “purchase.” It was like playing with fake money. Or having a ration card. It was set up something like this:

Yellow (2 points)

Green (2 points)

etc.

The colors corresponded to shelves, and each item had a number of points. I forgot the actual numbers, but on the yellow shelf, for example, a bag of flour would be worth one point. Most items were one point.

The shelves had what you’d expect. Canned beans and bags of rice and flour. I thought it would be more heterogeneous, being donated, but they had multiples of just about everything. The same generic refried beans, peanut butter and beef stew. Chicken of the Sea. Del Monte tomato sauce.

They were a little more flexible on the produce, which was, unfortunately, pretty flexible itself itself. They had a whole box of bruised, wrinkled apples and they were pretty much throwing bags of salad mix at me. That’s right, the fancy kind, with the mesculun and arrugula. They had Romaine, too.

Bread was abundant and of surprisingly high quality. Most of it came from Trader Joe’s. There were focaccia, baguettes, various rustic loaves. Most of it was extra-firm, but I managed to get two fairly soft ones.

I have to admit I got pretty excited by the sweet baked goods shelf, from which I was allowed one item. There were carrot muffin four packs, glazed fruit breads and sticky buns. I took the sticky buns and, of course, started eating them shortly after getting home.

Poor people. No impulse control.

OK, so you want to know about the weird stuff.

I did grab a mysterious bag of “baking mix,” which contained flour, powdered milk and various chemical additives. I guess I was thinking, “bunker.”

In the cooler they had unlabeled bags of Pad Thai sauce. Next to those were prepared sushi rolls, which I’m reluctant to buy in the store, much less after they’ve been deemed food bank-worthy.

In the end, it was a great experience. Cheerful (yes, I’m really using that word) staff, a bearable wait and a selection of useful, non-scary foods. And it didn’t have that charity feeling, like we were the unwashed masses grudgingly receiving a handout. I didn’t feel like a rock star either, but still, it was okay.